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  • Jugaad: I Know A Guy

    In Gregory David Roberts’s Shantaram, the relationship between Lindsay Ford and his local guide, Prabaker, is a way of understanding the everyday Indian practice of jugaad. Lindsay arrives in Bombay (present day Mumbai) using a false passport, intending the city to be merely a stopover on his journey from New Zealand to Germany. However, he decides to hire Prabaker to get around the city. Their relationship quickly develops into a friendship, with Prabaker affectionately renaming him “Linbaba” and later taking him to his native village, Sunder. Yet Prabaker’s importance extends beyond companionship: he represents the invaluable acquaintance who knows how to make things happen. He understands the city, speaks its social language and can connect Lindsay to the people, places and resources that would otherwise remain inaccessible to an outsider. In this sense, Prabaker embodies the familiar assurance, “I know a guy.” The phrase captures one dimension of jugaad: the ability to solve problems by drawing upon informal networks of friends, relatives, neighbours and acquaintances. 

    Imagine attempting to travel across India entirely on your own, as someone who is visiting for the first time. You book your hotels online, you look at locations on Google Maps, compare prices on travel websites and plan a meticulous itinerary. On paper, the journey appears quite manageable. Yet the moment you step outside the predictable world of airports, hotel chains and app-based taxi rides, another face of India starts to unravel. This is the India that cannot always be navigated through a screen. When formal systems are slow, expensive or difficult to navigate, knowing someone who can identify the correct person, arrange an introduction or find an unconventional solution turns into a form of social capital.

     

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    Such an acquaintance does not necessarily possess official authority; their usefulness comes from knowing whom to approach and how the system actually functions. Prabaker, in     Shantaram plays this role for Lindsay. He makes an overwhelming and unfamiliar metropolis navigable through his knowledge of its people and more importantly, unwritten rules. Jugaad, in a way, describes a method of getting things done, in which human connections compensate for limited access. 

    The phrase “I know a guy” is often used jokingly, but it underscores and reveals something fundamental about how India functions. The “guy” in question may be a driver who knows a mechanic, a tour guide who speaks three regional languages(or maybe even foreign languages such as Mandarin or Spanish), or a hotel employee whose cousin can arrange a last-minute journey to a remote village. Such people serve as bridges between formal systems and the vast informal economy that surrounds them. 

    Jugaad is now widely acknowledged as a distinctly South Asian concept (with its own Wikipedia article), even if similar practices exist in other parts of the world. Derived from Hindi and also used in Urdu and Punjabi, the term describes the ingenuity needed in order to solve a problem with limited resources, often through improvisation, the use of personal contacts and unconventional arrangements. It can refer to anything from a makeshift repair to an affordable transport solution, but it also captures the social resourcefulness behind the phrase “I know a guy.” In recent years, jugaad has acquired meanings beyond everyday speech and entered global discussions of management and “frugal innovation.” Yet within South Asia, it remains as an abstract business philosophy rather than a practical method of navigating daily life. 

     

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    A local driver would possess the knowledge of certain roads becoming unusable during the monsoon season, and a local fisherman would know when boats can safely cross a particular stretch of water. Their knowledge is rooted in their lived experiences, but is also frequently undervalued because it is not presented through an official institution.
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    India’s informal economy includes millions of workers and businesses operating outside (or partly outside) the structures associated with registered companies, fixed salaries, standardized contracts and prices that have been clearly advertised. Street vendors, domestic workers, small repair shops, guides, porters, drivers, craftspeople and countless family-run businesses make up this realm. Yet their work does not lie in the peripheries of Indian life; it is found at its very core. 

    In a shopping mall, every product carries a maximum retail price. But when one goes to a street market, the price may emerge only through a conversation with the vendors. After a brutal round of bargaining, the final amount asked of the customer might be dependent on the time of day, the quantity purchased, the buyer’s familiarity with local prices and, sometimes, their command of the language. Is the quoted price reasonable? Would bargaining be expected or insulting? How low is too low? This is where local knowledge becomes valuable. The guy that one knows, knows when a price is negotiable, when it is already fair and when a customer is being charged an exaggerated “tourist rate.”

    India has hundreds of languages and dialects, and even widely spoken languages change noticeably across regions. A person may know some formal ways of speaking Hindi and still struggle with a rapid conversation in a local market. Someone fluent in English may easily book a room in a city hotel but encounter difficulty whilst arranging for transportation in more unfamiliar terrain. India’s major routes and cities can be navigated through flights, trains and app-based cabs. However, reaching smaller towns or villages may require informal arrangements with local people. This includes a shared taxi with unknown strangers if one has to cut down on costs, an auto-rickshaw driver that has been recommended by a shopkeeper, or a private vehicle. The system can appear chaotic to an outsider, yet it often operates through dense networks of trust and reputation.

     

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    One might argue that information is available online, but the most useful information might not be displayed there. A local driver would possess the knowledge of certain roads becoming unusable during the monsoon season, and a local fisherman would know when boats can safely cross a particular stretch of water. Their knowledge is rooted in their lived experiences, but is also frequently undervalued because it is not presented through an official institution.

    The phrase “I know a guy” therefore, describes a networked society in which people rely on acquaintances to overcome uncertainty, and minimize risks. The “guy” possesses what might be termed as navigational capital: the ability to connect people, negotiate arrangements and make systems intelligible. To travel through India is to discover that the country does not run only through official institutions. It also runs through conversations, recommendations, introductions and small acts of mediation: all of which makes a person resourceful or jugaadu. A journey becomes easier when someone knows the language, understands the local rhythm and can identify the right person to call. One may begin with a detailed itinerary. But somewhere along the way, the map will fail, the advertised price will become negotiable, and the bus you expected will not arrive. Then someone will smile, take out their phone and say the sentence that keeps much of India moving: “Don’t worry. I know a guy.” That is what jugaad looks like.

  • Speed Racers

    In a world where most sports are rooted in home turf traditions — stadiums, hometown crowds, flags waving from local bleachers — Formula 1 is the outlier. It doesn’t belong to one city, or even one country. It moves across the world. Across 24 races and 21 countries every season, Formula 1 transforms global cities into race tracks. One week it’s the glittering harbour of Monaco. The next, the casinos of Las Vegas or the sands of Abu Dhabi. At one point, even Noida, the urban development on the outskirts of the National Capital Region of India.

    That geographic churn isn’t just a logistical feat — it’s the very reason F1 has gone from niche motorsport to mainstream spectacle. In fact, no other global sport matches this level of built-in mobility. Cricket may have the IPL, but its stage is largely South Asian. Football has the World Cup, but only once every four years. Tennis tours the globe, yes, but its real energy centres around four Grand Slams — Australia, France, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Formula 1, meanwhile, is a cultural roadshow that never stops moving. That’s what makes it both elusive and magnetic.

     

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    F1’s unique selling point isn’t just speed — it’s access by proximity. Even if you’ve never watched a race live, chances are you’ve seen clips of street circuits in Singapore or backdrops of European palaces flashing behind cars moving at 300 km/h. It makes you feel like you’re part of something global.

    For cities that host it, the payoff goes beyond tourism. It’s branding. Countries lobby hard to win hosting rights — not just for tourism, but because an F1 weekend places them on the global culture map.

    For a brief moment, the Buddh International Circuit outside Delhi put India on the F1 map. From 2011 to 2013, India hosted the Grand Prix. It was a spectacle — complete with red carpets, celebrity turnouts, and roaring engines slicing through Greater Noida. The logistics were imperfect. Ticket prices weren’t cheap. But the intrigue was undeniable.

    Then it vanished. Bureaucratic tussles over taxes and permissions shut down the race before it could gain traction. In the end, it wasn’t a lack of interest — it was the state’s inability to align policy with spectacle. Yet, the memory stuck. A whole generation of Indian fans got their first live taste of F1, and even today, there are growing fandoms, motorsport clubs, and homegrown racers building momentum in its wake.

     India’s 2028 Comeback Bid

    More than ten years after India’s much-vaunted fling with F1 at the Buddh International Circuit, the country is going hammer and tongs at it again. The government, recognizing that circuitous tax loops and regulatory hurdles stymied the holding of more races, is trying to resolve the problem. Sports Minister Mansukh Mandaviya has been in discussions with stakeholders (most prominently representatives from the powerful Adani Group) expected to take over the circuit, and officials from India’s motorsports federation, in order to deal with problems of taxation, regulation, and infrastructure. However, sweeping ministerial statements have been made often enough, and the timeline has already slid forward once, from 2027 to 2028. Meanwhile, F1 CEO Stefano Domenicali has cautioned that the perfect collaborations won’t be possible in the very short term. Therefore, we must wait and watch.

    The Kid Who Might Get There Before the Race Does

    Only two drivers from India have ever raced in a Formula One Grand Prix: Narain Karthikeyan and Karun Chandhok. But now there is Atiqa Mir.

    A young, female karting prodigy from Srinagar, Mir has become the first Indian and Asian female racer chosen for the Formula 1 Academy’s ‘Discover Your Drive’ development program (her father is Asif Mir, India’s first national karting champion). She’s since become the first Indian female driver to qualify for the finals of the Rotax Euro Trophy, and the first female racer to win at the Rotax Max Challenge International Trophy in Le Mans. The extraordinary thing is that despite not having a home race or domestic support, India already has an F1-worthy driver — and if Buddh reopens in 2028, Mir may be a face fans recognize before she ever races on home soil.

     

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    Fashion, too, has played a part. With race-day outfits going viral and luxury brands turning paddocks into runways, Formula 1 is now an aesthetic in itself.
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    So how did this hyper-niche European sport, once known for champagne and super yachts, become a fixture on Gen Z’s radar?

    The answer lies partly in storytelling. Netflix’s Drive to Survive did more than document the races — it rebranded F1 as a high-stakes human drama. Viewers who didn’t know DRS from a drag strip suddenly had favourite drivers, team rivalries, and opinions about tyre strategy. It made the inaccessible feel intimate.

    Fashion, too, has played a part. With race-day outfits going viral and luxury brands turning paddocks into runways, Formula 1 is now an aesthetic in itself. Lewis Hamilton is as much a fashion icon as he is a record-breaking driver. This sport even got Brad Pitt to make a movie about it.

     

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    What We’re Really Watching

    It’s about cities competing for global attention. It’s about countries using spectacle to announce their arrival. And it’s about fans — from Miami to Monaco to Mumbai — finding belonging in a sport that’s never in the same place twice. As the sport continues to expand, we’re watching soft power in motion. In that way, Formula 1 has become more than a sport. It’s a feeling. And it’s everywhere.

    As they say, “Lights out and away we go!”

  • The Many Lives Of Khow Suey

    What cuisine comes to mind when you think of khow suey? A rich coconut noodle soup from Myanmar, warm and comforting, topped with crunchy fried garlic, chilli oil, and lime. It’s creamy, spicy, slurpable — the kind of dish that feels unmistakably moreish. Maybe it’s the combination of coconut milk and turmeric, or the layers of texture — soft noodles, crisp toppings, a soupy base — that root it so firmly in memory.

    Thailand has khao soi — a spicier, tangier, crowned version with crispy noodles. Malaysia offers laksa, a riot of flavour swimming in coconut milk and lemongrass. Indonesia’s soto ayam, Sri Lanka’s kiri hodi, and even Peru’s chupe de camarones all orbit the same sun: broth, spice, starch, and texture. These are not copies. These are cousins — born of similar climates, similar geographies perhaps, and wildly different cultures.

     

     

    But the real twist? You don’t need to cross continents to taste this evolution. Sometimes, just crossing a few neighbourhoods or family kitchens is enough.

    Khow suey’s path to India wasn’t a smooth one. Burma (now Myanmar), once a British colony, had swathes of Indian traders, especially those from the Gujarati Memon and the South Indian Chettiar communities. But the Japanese invasion of the country in 1942, followed by the occupation of the military junta in the 1960s forced an exodus of South Asians back to India and Pakistan. They brought with them their culinary memories, especially their version of the traditional Burmese dish, the Ohn-No Kyaukse, noodles in a coconut milk-based broth (often thickened with chickpea flour), studded with chicken or meat. 

    Gujarat has its own version, khausa, a similar soupy noodle dish thick with yogurt and gram flour, swished with spicy chutney, heaped with crunchies on top, and a boiled egg sloshing within. Most famously, the dish was served at Anant Ambani and Radhika Merchant’s pre-wedding festivities in 2024. But most Gujaratis eat it off the street stalls in Surat, which is where it’s made its home.

    Down south, in Tamil Nadu, it was the wealthy Chettiar merchants and civil servants who had rooted themselves in British-colonized Burma. Turfed out during the takeover by the Myanmar junta, they returned to Chennai, bringing their version of the dish with them. North Chennai has a scatter of vendors serving Myanmar-inspired cuisine like Atho (cabbage-tossed fat noodles in gravy, crowned with condiments), possibly a corruption of the original Kauk Swe Thoke.

     

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    Burma (now Myanmar), once a British colony, had swathes of Indian traders, especially those from the Gujarati Memon and the South Indian Chettiar communities.
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    Khow suey has found its way into every menu at restaurants serving South East Asian food. It has become a staple, understandably, since its flavors sit so comfortably close to coconut-sluiced gravies of India.

    For example, sol kadhi of the Konkan coast — a cool, pink coconut-based digestive, usually eaten with rice with a fiery seafood thali. In Bengal, shorshe ilish marries mustard with chilli and oil in a sauce that’s more punch than comfort. In Tamil Nadu, coconut takes over the entire spice mix — kozhi kuzhambu brings a quiet heat mellowed by fresh ground masala and curry leaves. And even this barely scratches the surface. These are just fragments from a much larger, richer mosaic — one that shifts across regions, communities, and generations.

     

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    So, how did we all end up with variations of the same comfort food?

    For too long, food discourse has been obsessed with ‘authenticity’. Who invented what? Whose grandmother’s recipe is the original? But khow suey, and the many dishes like it, show us that origin stories are often a little fuzzy — and that’s okay. Food isn’t static. It adapts, travels, merges. Sometimes it forgets where it came from.

    And within India itself, this multiplicity is everywhere. There’s no single Indian curry, for instance. There are at least fifty. Some are made with coconut, others with yogurt, some are soured with kokum, some sweetened with jaggery, some are silken smooth, others are rugged and mustardy. Some are vegan by default, some overflow with meat. 

    So maybe the point isn’t to find the first khow suey. Maybe the more interesting story is how so many people, across oceans and states and languages, came up with some version of the same thing. A bowl. A broth. Some carbs. And a little crunch. Khow suey didn’t spread because people copied the recipes. It spread because hungry taste buds everywhere recognized it as a shape hunger takes everywhere, filled in differently by whoever’s cooking.

  • Sold Out! India’s Booming Concert Economy

    We’ve all felt it — that sudden spike of adrenaline when a major concert is announced. Group chats light up, ticketing sites crash, and within minutes, timelines are filled with heartbreak and hype. Some people manage to snag their spot. Others are met with frozen screens, payment failures, or the dreaded Sold Out banner. Almost immediately, the black market springs into action — tickets resold at double or triple the original price.

    And yet, the shows are packed. India’s concert economy is booming, and Gen Z is driving much of the demand. With limited savings but outsized aspiration, this generation is willing to splurge on live music, treating it not just as an experience, but a cultural milestone.

    It wasn’t always like this. Concerts in India were once rare and often hosted in large stadiums or college festivals, with patchy production and minimal media attention. International artists like Shakira (2007) or Bryan Adams (who toured India repeatedly) drew massive crowds, but performances were usually one-offs — seen as novelty events rather than part of a structured touring circuit.

     

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    Fast forward to the 2020s, and the shift is stark. The global rise of streaming, social media virality, and India’s booming youth population has turned the country into a tantalising market for global artists and brands alike. The 2026–27 calendar includes artists such as Fred again.., Calvin Harris, Khalid, Chet Faker, The Chainsmokers, French Montana and Gorillaz. They are now part of a new wave of concerts that blur the line between music, luxury experience, and digital spectacle. Production scales have exploded. 

    Consider the numbers. India’s organised live-events market crossed ₹12,000 crore in 2024, and a 2026 EY-Parthenon and BookMyShow report placed the numbers at nearly ₹13,000 crore today. The premium international touring segment has nearly doubled in scale between 2024 and 2026.

    Festival culture has grown alongside it. Events like Lollapalooza India and Sunburn have paved the way for major international lineups, showing promoters that large-scale concerts can succeed. Ticketing platforms and sponsors have stepped up, while a massive, youthful population and rising middle class have created one of the world’s most promising new markets for live music.

     

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    The 2026–27 calendar includes artists such as Fred again.., Calvin Harris, Khalid, Chet Faker, The Chainsmokers, French Montana and Gorillaz. They are now part of a new wave of concerts that blur the line between music, luxury experience, and digital spectacle.
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    So what’s behind this new wave of concert fever? Why are tickets so expensive — and why are people still paying? From international tour logistics and VIP pricing tiers to India’s own infrastructural and economic shifts, the story of live music today is also a story of access, aspiration, and who gets to participate in the global gig economy.

    The Aspirational Economy at Play

    Part of the reason fans are willing to shell out the big bucks is India’s changing cultural economy. After all, attending a concert is about more than just the music; it is the whole experience, later spun out across reels and stories and posts on Instagram. Fans fly in from across India, spending on hotels, restaurants, transport, having a much larger multiplier effect across the economy. A single performance can transform into a far wider tourism and employment opportunity.

    The concert economy is therefore no longer simply about music. It is becoming part of India’s experience economy.

    The Real Cost of Bringing It to India

    Yet, unlike North America or Europe, India isn’t part of a well-oiled touring circuit. It has only a handful of viable concert cities — Mumbai, Delhi, Bengaluru — and very few plug-and-play venues. This means every show is a logistical patchwork. Organisers often have to build stages, import technical equipment, and arrange elaborate security protocols from scratch.

    “In the West, artists recover production costs over 30 to 40 cities. In India, most tours include just one or two dates,” according to industry insiders, division of ticket pricing and logistics — a dynamic often cited by commentators at BookMyShow’s live entertainment division. That means fewer tickets to recoup the same massive costs. From chartered flights to hotels for a hundred-person entourage, from airlifting LED rigs to renting cricket stadiums, every detail adds up.

    What’s more, India’s complex permissions ecosystem makes it expensive before the first note is even played. Multiple permits, venue fees, GST, entertainment taxes, and local bureaucracies all inflate the baseline. Many promoters end up working with razor-thin margins and rely on brand partnerships and VIP tiers to turn any profit. Concerts need permissions from police, fire services, municipal bodies, excise and public-health departments. In Maharashtra alone, organisers navigate up to 15 clearances. And permissions can be rescinded at the very last minute.

     

     

    The shortage of venues is another concern. India still lacks enough arenas capable of hosting large international productions, forcing promoters to retrofit cricket stadiums, racecourses and other multipurpose spaces for concerts. It works, but only as a temporary solution, and expectedly comes with its own obstacles.

    An Exclusionary Pricing Economy

    That cost eventually reaches the audience.

    Ticket tiers in India mimic international standards but without the same income elasticity. General admission for big names starts around ₹5,000–7,000, with VIP access running upwards of ₹20,000. When Post Malone performed in Mumbai in 2023, VIP and lounge packages touched nearly ₹50,000. At one of the most talked-about concerts in India in 2025, Coldplay’s Music of the Spheres shows in Mumbai featured pricing tiers ranging from ₹2,500 for basic seated tickets to as high as ₹35,000 for the premium lounges — with VIP and lounge packages reportedly priced around ₹35,000 in certain sections. These higher-tier tickets became lightning rods for social media, as fans scrambled to secure access and influencers shared behind-the-scenes peeks — heightening the sense that not everyone gets to be in the room.

    But even the more ‘affordable’ ticket slabs — like the ₹2,500 or ₹4,500 ones, offer little by way of experience. Attendees in these sections are often so far from the stage that the performer is reduced to a distant blur, visible only through giant LED screens. For many, it feels less like being at a concert and more like paying to watch a YouTube livestream in a crowd.

    Besides, ticketing platforms haven’t kept pace with the demand. Scalping is rampant, especially through third-party resale on platforms or informal black market networks. What complicates the issue is the lack of regulation. While countries like the UK have attempted legal crackdowns on scalping, India lacks centralized policies or legal frameworks to monitor secondary ticket sales. This creates a free-for-all, where the most desperate (and wealthiest) fans end up paying the most.

    Despite the buzz, there’s tension simmering underneath. Smaller organisers struggle to break even. Fans grow disillusioned. And even brands that sponsor shows have begun to rethink ROI (Return on Investment) when online visibility outweighs real-world engagement.

     

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    India Has the Audience. Does It Have the Infrastructure?

    India is now being compared with Singapore, Bangkok and Tokyo as a South Asian anchor for international tours. The key difference is that India offers scale. Its youthful population, rising incomes and appetite for experiences make it one of the most promising markets for live entertainment.

    But established concert hubs also offer something India often lacks: predictability. For international promoters, established venues, clear regulations, reliable infrastructure and professional safety systems can be almost as important as audience size.

    India is beginning to address this imbalance. For example, Maharashtra has come up with the idea for a single-window clearance system. Meanwhile, discussions are afoot to spread concert venues to Tier-II and Tier-III markets.

    The country has already achieved the hardest part: Fred again.., Calvin Harris, The Lumineers and the growing roster of global acts arriving in 2026 are proof that the country has become a serious touring destination. But as India’s concert economy matures, so must its infrastructure. That means better venues, decentralised circuits, artist-friendly taxation, clearer regulations, and proper resale mechanisms. Until then, the thrill of the live gig will continue to be a privilege — one reserved for those who can afford the hype.

  • Ink From The East

    For generations before the millennials, translated literature in India was often synonymous with the works of European authors: Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Camus, Cervantes, Hugo, Kafka. However, today’s bookstores will tell you a different story. 

    Japanese and South Korean fiction (translated to English) has become increasingly popular, and younger generations of readers are beckoned by stories set inside mysterious cafés in Tokyo, Japanese neighborhoods famous for their bookshops, convenience stores beside the sea, and the streets of South Korea’s capital, Seoul. 

    Last year, at the Kolkata International Book Fair, publishers reported particularly strong interest in Japanese and Korean fiction among Gen Z and younger millennial readers, linking the shift partly to the popularity of manga, anime, K-pop and K-dramas. While writing about trends, a visitor to the book fair noted, ‘Relatively new to the trends list is South-East Asian literature, specifically Korean and Japanese literature, which, thanks to the influence of writers like Haruki Murakami and Han Kang, is also doing relatively well in terms of sales. Books translating the works of Hayao Miyazaki into text have also garnered attention, thanks to Gen-Z’s love for the Studio Ghibli films.’ 

     

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    One might argue that literature from Japan has long been privy to international prestige through writers such as Yukio Mishima, Yasunari Kawabata and Haruki Murakami. What appears different about the current wave is the popularity of a more subdued and possibly gentler category of translated fiction which is centered around themes of comfort, healing and everyday life. 

    Days at the Morisaki Bookshop by Satoshi Yagisawa, for instance, has sold more than 3,00,000 copies in India, making the country its second-largest market after the UK. While attending a literature fest in India this year, Yagisawa noted “I was very surprised and happy to learn that my books have such a big fan following here. I was encouraged to come here and am really happy that Indians have been so welcoming towards me,” Books such as Michiko Aoyama’s What You Are Looking for Is in the Library and Durian Sukegawa’s Sweet Bean Paste use similar themes i.e. libraries, bookshops, food and small human encounters to explore loneliness, change and belonging.

    A recent selection by Tokyo Weekender offers several more introductions to this particular mood. Sonoko Machida’s The Convenience Store by the Sea is based on a 24-hour convenience store called Tenderness, where an assortment of workers and customers gradually form unexpected connections. Yuta Takahashi’s The Curious Kitten at the Chibineko Kitchen combines three of the most recognizable ingredients of Japanese ‘healing fiction’ — food, cats and grief — as its protagonist discovers a seaside restaurant serving remembrance meals that briefly reconnect diners with those they have lost. Noriko Morishita’s memoir Every Day a Good Day reflects on what 25 years of studying Japanese tea culture taught her about patience, attention and accepting the gradual nature of understanding.

     

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    The rather accelerated popularity of K-pop and K-dramas across the globe has provided Indian audiences with familiar ways of approaching South Korea.
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    The appetite for Japanese books has also been fuelled by a much larger global infrastructure of Japanese cultural consumption. Books Kinokuniya, founded in Shinjuku in 1927, has helped make Japanese publishing culture internationally visible. Today its network encompasses 71 stores in Japan, 17 in the United States and another 19 across countries including Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Australia, Taiwan and the UAE, making the total more than 100 stores. Its international branches are stocked with Japanese and English-language books along with manga, stationery and cultural products. The Kinokuniya store in New York City is located in the heart of Manhattan, close to Bryant Park and the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building of the New York Public Library — a spot that is bound to attract footfall to the store. In this way, the concept of a Japanese bookstore itself has become a cultural export.

    South Korean literature has arrived through a somewhat different route. The rather accelerated popularity of K-pop and K-dramas across the globe has provided Indian audiences with familiar ways of approaching South Korea. BTS, Blackpink and K-dramas have introduced viewers not simply to entertainment (read: soft romances) but also to Korean food. The late Baek Se-hee authored I Want to Die But I Want to Eat Tteokbokki. The content of the book is centered around mental health issues and therapy, and yet the title is one that seeks to evoke a feeling of comfort through the mention of food. 

     

     

    Add to that the keenness that many young Indians now show towards learning the language and adopting their sense of fashion. For those who identify as readers, literature becomes the next stage of that curiosity: having encountered South Korea through a screen, they are curious to see how it reads in print. 

    The books themselves, however, have established identities independent of Hallyu (The Korean wave). Min Jin Lee’s Pachinko became a major success among Indian readers, while Han Kang’s The Vegetarian was an introduction for many to the stranger, darker possibilities of contemporary Korean fiction. After Han Kang received the 2024 Nobel Prize in Literature, Indian bookstores experienced a surge in demand for her work. Cho Nam-joo’s Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982, meanwhile, has found readers through its exploration of gender and the expectations placed upon women in contemporary Korean society.

    What has emerged, then, is more than a passing fascination with two countries and their culture. Japanese and Korean literature are expanding the definition of what it means to have a translated bookshelf in India. And perhaps their popularity also reveals what many contemporary readers here are seeking: stories that might be culturally unfamiliar and yet resonate with them emotionally. 

  • Checkmates Over Chit-Chat

    On a quiet Tuesday evening in Melbourne, the hum of conversation at a corner bar is occasionally broken by the crisp click of chess pieces. At the back table, two strangers sit across a checkered board, brows furrowed, drinks half-finished. They don’t know each other’s names yet, but that doesn’t seem to matter. A knight moves. A pawn falls. A friendship begins.

    This is not an anomaly. Across cities from New York to Nairobi, from Berlin to Bengaluru, chess is staging a quiet comeback — not as a game of dusty libraries or elite tournaments, but as a social ritual. In a world hyper-saturated with curated personas and digital fatigue, people are turning to something oddly analog and beautifully old-school to find each other.

     

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    The pandemic cracked something open in us. As lockdowns forced people indoors and interactions onto screens, many turned to puzzles and games. Among them, chess surged.

    The unexpected catalyst? The Queen’s Gambit. Netflix’s limited series dropped like a well-placed bishop, unleashing a global obsession. The show made chess sexy. Not just cerebral and not just for men. Suddenly, the most unlikely people were buying boards, watching openings on YouTube, and setting up accounts on Chess.com. 

    It was more than a trend. It was an emotional shift. Chess offered the opposite of small talk: deep, silent focus. A way to be together without performance. It wasn’t long before people wanted to play in person again.

    In Melbourne, chess nights have popped up in wine bars and indie bookstores. In London, players gather in Hyde Park with nothing more than travel boards and thermoses of tea. Brooklyn has blitz nights and Berlin has rooftop tournaments. These aren’t competitive clubs with ranking systems — they’re spaces of soft connection. Think run club, but for introverts. Therapy, but with pawns.

     

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    These aren’t competitive clubs with ranking systems — they’re spaces of soft connection. Think run club, but for introverts. Therapy, but with pawns
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    Sitting across a stranger with a shared purpose silences the usual anxieties of “What do I say next?” The board speaks for you. Your personality leaks out in moves: bold, cautious, curious, chaotic. 

    India’s relationship with chess goes way back — over a millennium, in fact. The game’s predecessor, chaturanga, was born on Indian soil. And yet, for decades, the cultural imagination surrounding chess in India was split between two poles: dusty coaching centres and dazzling prodigies.

    Now, that’s changing.

    Chennai remains the heartbeat, producing grandmasters like a factory line. But the newer pulse is looser, more accessible. Mumbai has chess cafes. Delhi has pop-up tournaments in public parks. In Bengaluru, techies meet after hours over a chessboard instead of beers. These are not future Vishwanath Anands — they’re creatives, freelancers, students, and retirees, finding a moment of flow in a frenzied world.

     

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    What’s unfolding is more than nostalgia for a game — it’s a cultural realignment. Social chess clubs are an antidote to overstimulation. They’re not asking you to be funny, hot, successful, or interesting. You just have to show up, be present, and think.

    Urban life is lonely. Not for lack of people, but for lack of pause. Chess forces a pause. It’s a rebellion against multitasking. A statement that connection doesn’t have to be loud or performative.

    As city dwellers seek out more intentional ways to relate — to themselves, to each other — expect to see more boards in bars, more pawns in parks, and more people sitting down to play.

  • What Is India Eating?

    Open the door to a young urban Indian kitchen today and the cabinets tell their own story. Flour milled from jowar and bajra grain sits next to chocolate-flavored protein powder. A jar of fermented kanji sits cheek by jowl with a bottle of kombucha. This is not a kitchen caught between two worlds so much as one that doesn’t see them as separate at all. The country that once measured a good meal by the number of bowls in their thali, is now equally likely to measure it in macros, grams of protein and gut-friendly fiber.

    Across the country, there is a renewed appetite for local, seasonal and foraged ingredients. This spills over to local, indigenous spirits such as feni and mahua; once decried as unfashionable, they are now shelved in some of the country’s most expensive restaurants. Local is the name of the game. Goa, always a tourist favorite, was crowned the year’s top food destination, thanks to a clutch of fresh restaurants and chefs dabbling in hyperlocal cooking.

     

    On our plates – regional Indian food, seasonal and locally-foraged | in.pinterest.com

     

    Equally, wellness is paramount. Much like the rest of the world, protein and its sequel, fiber, are now taking pride of place on Indian plates. What began as a niche fixation on social media is poised to reach the mainstream. As a direct consequence of this, the protein bar is getting a makeover. Fatigued by artificial-tasting, sweet bars and shakes, consumers are instead choosing savory snacks, with manufacturers now finding ways to stabilize spice-heavy fats so that a protein bar can taste less like a gym supplement and more like familiar street food.

    Cocktail menus are footstepping in the same direction, exchanging sugar for salt and spice: fermentation and pickling are turning clubs and bars into extensions of high-end restaurant kitchens, aimed at a younger, Gen Z clientele more interested in complexity than in getting mindlessly drunk.

     

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    The biggest driver of menus appears to be whether a dish will look good on your feed or not. This is resulting in a spate of milquetoast cafés, all of whom offer similar menus with similar-looking dishes.
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    In a reflection of affluent India’s obsession with pet care, pet nutrition has become one of the defining stories of the year. Nutritionally sound formulated, veterinarian-grade pet food is being pitched not as an indulgence but as a long-term health investment. This says something rather poignant about Indian households today. A pampered pooch was once the domain of the super-wealthy or the eccentric. But now middle-class urban Indians are fuelling a boom in India’s pet care industry whose value has nearly doubled in the last few years.

     

    The protein bar reigns supreme in urban Indian kitchens. | in.pinterest.com

     

    Much of India’s restaurant industry seems to have been triggered by the juggernaut of Instagram’s unceasing algorithm, churning out post after aesthetically-curated post. The biggest driver of menus appears to be whether a dish will look good on your feed or not. This is resulting in a spate of milquetoast cafés, all of whom offer similar menus with similar-looking dishes. The avocado toast has become a staple across eateries, and diners might drown in a moat of (beautifully-presented) matcha. Restaurateurs today are understandably wary of taking risks – it is a precarious business after all, especially in cities such as Mumbai with teetering real estate rates – but this can also result in bland simulacra.

    The pull towards heritage ingredients and forgotten spirits is a search for authenticity in a market that increasingly rewards aesthetics and style over inventive cooking; the pull to locally-flavored protein draws from the same zeitgeist. Both impulses speak to the same thing: a rising, aspiring India trying to eat its way into the version of itself it would like to become.

  • Does Fashion Have A Credit Problem?

    When Anita Dongre unveiled Love All, the first capsule of her Festive Winter 2026 collection, the imagery was unmistakable: a tennis court, a flower-strung net, two players facing off as equals. It was meant to be a meditation on partnership — love as a game played on level ground. Instead, it became a flashpoint for one of Indian fashion’s most persistent anxieties: who gets credit for an idea, and who gets erased.

    The hullabaloo began almost instantly. Two smaller, independent fashion designers stepped forward within days of each other, each on their individual Instagram pages. In her post, Mehar Toor (Ada by Mehar) gestured to the campaign she had created in March in which she cited parallels in styling, composition and visual language. She framed it as recognition without acknowledgment, especially poignant as a smaller brand whose work had not been received with the fanfare the Dongre’s had.

    Sachi Raval of Same Sisters raised a related concern. She spoke about how Same Sisters had worked on a similar theme in 2023, with the same title. But this wasn’t the issue. In Raval’s case, a member of Dongre’s team had, roughly a year earlier, solicited style references online and reportedly engaged with posts from Same Sisters’ collection. Whether that exchange shaped the campaign, Raval couldn’t say for sure — but the possibility was enough to trouble her.

     

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    Instagram users, ever eager to share their hot takes, thronged to these pages. Many called out Dongre, while a few pointed out that if you go back far enough, even the brand Jaipur Rugs followed a similar aesthetic conceit, twining tennis with fashion.

    Dongre stood by her team’s work, and while acknowledging the feelings of the other designers, declined to offer an apology. Instead, she pointed out that “Tennis and fashion have shared a creative language for generations, and ‘Love All’ itself comes from that language of tennis…Rather than allowing a conversation between women-led brands become one of creative tension, I would like to acknowledge the feelings of the founders involved and congratulate them and other brands who share this space on what they have created.”

    Dongre’s incident has, in fact, occurred in quick succession to another instance of the same nature. A few months back, Ila Anoop, an independent designer based in Dehradun, and a former IAF pilot accused the famed designer Sabyasachi of plagiarizing her work. Her contention was that one of the pieces from the Sabyasachi Sari Edit capsule, the saree with the 3D brooch had been inspired directly from her creation. She also claimed that a comment she had posted on one of the Instagram posts for this campaign had been removed. There is no official complaint or legal action thus far, because in both cases, the matter hasn’t gone beyond social media chitter-chatter.

     

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    Individually, each dispute elbows us into examining difficult questions: does anyone truly own a silhouette, a palette, or a theme?
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    None of this is new. Every few months, accusations of plagiarism within the industry fly this way and that. Equally, smaller fashion brands have been accused of lifting from established houses just as often as the reverse. Samant Chauhan was accused of echoing a jalabiya silhouette closely associated with veteran couturier Rohit Bal, a dispute that curdled into a torrid public exchange. Wendell Rodricks once accused Payal Khandwala of appropriating his pleating techniques. The irony here of course, was that these particular techniques could be cast back to Japanese designer Issey Miyake, and have since been reinterpreted by countless designers around the globe. Designers as prominent as Sabyasachi Mukherjee, Masaba Gupta, Tarun Tahiliani and Ritu Kumar have all, at various points, spoken publicly about being copied — and some have taken the fight to court and won.

    What distinguishes the Dongre and Sabyasachi controversies from the Chauhan-Bal or Rodricks-Khandwala disputes is the asymmetry of power. Mehar Toor, Sachi Raval and Ila Anoop are independent, small fashion brands without the heft of the Sabyasachis and Dongres of the world.

     

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    Individually, each dispute elbows us into examining difficult questions: does anyone truly own a silhouette, a palette, or a theme if every designer is fishing in the same pool of inspiration? (One might say that tennis and fashion are a natural match.) All design has antecedents. Rajesh Pratap Singh has made more than two thousand white shirts without laying claim to the white shirt itself. Indian prints and sewing techniques circulate through craft communities long before they reach a runway. What separates inspiration from theft is sometimes just an opinion, rather than a legal issue, especially in a country where relatively few silhouettes are patented or copyrighted. This in no way takes away from the very real problems of plagiarism that afflict the industry.

    What might be the way out? Perhaps an independent body capable of examining these disputes forensically? Instagram has been a tremendous democratizing force but matters of such urgency and nuance sometimes need more than outraged Instagram reels and comment sections. In an industry built on centuries of borrowing, reinterpreting, and reviving, this shared uncertainty dealt with in an honest way, might be exactly what gives Indian fashion a clearer, fairer language.

  • Vada Pav Goes to New York

  • A Sneak(er) Attack

    For young, status-conscious Indians, sneakers have become the new collectible. The craze began gathering pace around 2016, when Nike and Adidas expanded their general releases across the country, and Anand Ahuja launched VegNonVeg, India’s first multi-brand sneaker boutique. A decade on, the market is estimated at nearly $3.9 billion and is projected to approach $6 billion in the early 2030s.

    But for a growing cohort of Indian sneakerheads, the appeal of building a sneaker collection is no longer its rarity or its cost. Instead, it is all about the story behind the shoe and how it makes them feel. Just in time, then, for the slew of homegrown sneaker brands that are popping up all over our social media. These brands use Indian material, and pull from South Asian inspiration – ikat, block prints, rangoli designs – turning the sneaker into a status symbol in itself.

    These sneakers sit between two extremes. On one side, international brands with sophisticated storytelling but little connection to Indian culture. On the other are products that lean so heavily into ‘Made in India’ that they turn into souvenirs rather than wearable lifestyle products.

     

     

    Gully Labs, the Delhi-based label founded in 2023 by Arjun Singh and Animesh Mishra, is betting that the answer lies somewhere in between. Its proposition is straightforward: Indian identity can be a source of design and storytelling without becoming a gimmick. The brand has emerged as one of the homegrown names attracting attention in India’s increasingly crowded sneaker market, releasing a new drop roughly every 60 days. Its designs use incorporate everything from rangoli motifs, Devanagari script and, in one case, a boot inspired by Kerala’s chundan vallam, or snake boats.

    The result is an attempt to make an Indian sneaker that feels less like a souvenir and more like a statement of contemporary identity.

    For Singh, the shift was cumulative. Studying in Australia, he watched a sneaker culture where “every shoe had a story… People knew why they were buying what they were buying.” Watching international brands lift Indian textiles and handicrafts was deeply upsetting: “We were paying hundreds of dollars to have our own culture sold back to us.” Coming home, he found manufacturing muscle without design confidence: “India didn’t lack craftsmanship, it lacked confidence in its own design language.”

     

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    These brands use Indian material, and pull from South Asian inspiration – ikat, block prints, rangoli designs – turning the sneaker into a status symbol in itself.
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    Mishra, who left Bain to build Gully Labs, says what convinced him was customers “wanting to know why the shoe existed. That’s when I knew we weren’t building another sneaker company. We were building a brand.”

    “Five years ago, most conversations around sneakers in India started with ‘How do I get this pair?’” says Singh. “Today they’re starting with ‘What does this pair say about me?’”

    This then, is the real marker of change in the Indian sneaker scene. Not the profusion of international brands, but homegrown ones finding their identity and their audience. Consumers were no longer buying just logos. They were buying stories, design and identity.

    Social media made authenticity impossible to fake. Consumers nowadays are immediately able to tell when a design feels forced. Sriraam Padmanabhan, who leads brand strategy at Gully Labs, ties this to a generational break from looking West for cultural approval. For the longest time, India used to look towards the West until younger generations began to question that, thanks to the Internet: “suddenly artists start to emerge from their living rooms and bedrooms and… find an audience.”

     

     

    The sneaker landscape is changing incontrovertibly, but hurdles still abound.

    For one, pricing psychology plays a big role. “When a Nike or an Adidas comes here and sells something for Rs 5,000, there’s an immediate acceptance of quality,” says Padmanabhan. “But when an Indian brand comes in and does all the same things, there’s a trust barrier we have to go through.” This, even though Indian artisans and craftspeople can create pretty much everything any North American brand does.

    Padmanabhan also cites pushback from within sneaker circles themselves, for being too desi. “It’s almost this resistance that sneaker culture should be western and not Indian,” he says, comparing it to the skepticism that Indian musical acts like Indian Ocean used to face: “It takes a long time. We just keep convincing people that we are coming with great intentions.”

    Reflecting on Gully Labs’ U.S. pop-ups, Singh says the experience confirmed something he had believed all along: “People don’t connect with products just because they’re Indian; they connect because they’re authentic.” Padmanabhan attributes the diaspora’s warmer reception to distance itself: “because they’re one removed in some ways… they see it much better.” The pop-ups were “really encouraging,” he says, enough that Gully Labs is now planning “exclusive sort of artist collabs with Indian-American artists.”

     

     

    But this is much larger than a singular brand. The bigger story here is that the aesthetic vocabulary of a very urban shoe reverberates not just within the North American diaspora, but also throughout smaller cities around India. Tier II and III cities are connecting with homegrown sneakers perhaps because the stories and crafts feel familiar to them.

    This can happen only when Indian sneaker identity draws from lived material, not iconography. “An authentic Indian sneaker brand isn’t one that puts random motifs or tricolours on a shoe,” Singh says. “It’s one that starts with a story that could only come from here.” He gestures at Gully Lab’s Kulfi collection — built around “the ordinary Indian memory” of waiting for the kulfi vendor — and the Kara collection, inspired by Karnataka’s tea plantations and the state’s Kasuti embroidery, as the clearest tests of that idea.

    As Padmanabhan puts it: “Let’s stop borrowing culture, let’s just start to celebrate what we have — and I think what we have is truly cool.”